I will deviate somewhat from the specific conference topic of Buddhist nuns in India by instead focusing on the lay title of vihārasvāminī, which belonged to female donors attested in South Asian inscriptions. Widespread epigraphic and literary evidence of patronage by lay female devotees belonging to various classes ranging from queens to maidservants as well as Buddhist nuns whose donations are recorded in numerous inscriptions at early stūpa sites such as Bhārhut and Sāncī indicates their pivotal role in the material support of monasteries. Following the lead of Gregory Schopen, who has argued that that some Buddhist monasteries were privately owned and inherited by prosperous families responsible for their maintenance and supervision, I will specifically address the question of female ownership of monasteries by carefully looking at examples of Kuṣāṇa and Gupta period Kharoṣṭhī and Brāhmī inscriptions with references to vihārasvāminīs, literally meaning “owner” or “mistress” of a monastery. By asking whether vihārasvāminīs owned the monasteries that they donated or made donations to, several other questions related to this special class of female lay donors may be raised:
Does the title of –svāminī refer to their position as wives or daughters of male vihārasvāmins?
Did these female lay monastic officials fulfill administrative roles by mediating between monastic communities and lay society?
What was the relationship between female vihārasvāminīs and monks and nuns inhabiting these monasteries? [relations between monks and nuns (monastic sangha) receive considerable attention, as do symbiotic exchanges between lay and monastic communities, but links between lay female donors and monks or nuns who received their donations deserve further exploration. Perhaps another way of asking this question is, “what must it have been like for male or female renouncers to live in monasteries administered by female (as opposed to male) vihārasvāminīs?”]
By holding this title, were they simply acknowledged as chief patronesses (as female counterparts to male ‘masters’ of monasteries), or, as Prof. Schopen provocatively argues based on donative formulae in Indian Buddhist inscriptions and references to male vihārasvāmins in the Mūlasarvāstivāda-vinaya, were they actually owners of monasteries with obligations for their maintenance? If this was the case, how was it possible to donate a monastery or to a monastery yet still remain responsible for what was given away? Such an ongoing relationship would not seem to conform to general concepts of gift giving and property exchange in South Asian Dharmaśāstra traditions.
Although I can not adequately answer all of these questions based on the limited epigraphic data at my disposal (my search was not exhaustive, and I have not yet attempted to find vihārasvāminīs in literary sources), I hope that this presentation of selected examples of vihārasvāminīs in Indian Buddhist inscriptions may generate suggestions for additional sources to explore, help to refine these inquiries beyond levels of preliminary speculation, and lead to discussions of possible connections between other types of female patrons and Buddhist nuns.
